These female MCs are poised to become city's next big things

In fact, she had never before rapped on record when her cousin, Donta Moye, 23, who produces music under the name Block on da Trakk, asked her to record a track at his house last summer. Johnson, then 18, of Bronzeville, was eager to give it a shot.

Block thought the local music scene needed a new female voice, especially in the aggressive Chicago rap subgenre known as drill music. He had the perfect beat and wanted to help his cousin get away from some of the dangerous behavior and influences with which she was involved. They recorded a slow-burning street anthem called "I Need a Hitta," and the rap career of Katie Got Bandz was born.

Well, sort of—the career part was unexpected. Katie was serving jail time on a gun charge when the video for "I Need a Hitta" came out and became a YouTube hit among local youth, so it was a surprise for her to come home to a fan base. The sudden success, however, prompted her to keep making music.

"I ain't want to be a one-hit wonder so I'm like. 'Let me just keep going,'" she explained recently in Pilsen's CarterCo recording studio, where she is working on her proper mixtape debut, "Bands and Hittas." In the months since the video for "I Need a Hitta" came out, Katie has released only a handful of songs, but one of them, "Ridin' Around and Drillin'," caught the attention of Chicago rapper King L (formerly King Louie) and his team at Lawless Inc. Katie signed a deal with Lawless in May—prompting her to quit her job at McDonald's—and appears poised to become Chicago's next breakout rapper.

"She's unique. She's something that the game has been missing," said Larry "Larro" Wilson, CEO of Lawless Inc. "Katie is definitely original and organic."

Katie is part of a cohort of young female MCs in Chicago attracting attention in the wake of the recent success of local male rappers such as Chief Keef (signed to Interscope Records), King L (signed to Sony/Epic Records), Rockie Fresh (signed to Rick Ross' Maybach Music Group) and others. The music industry has been quick to sign these rappers to major label deals, but recognition for their female counterparts has not been as rapid.

That is a gap these artists are ready to confront.

"So many guys think that girl rappers are just a waste of listening time," said Chimekay Powell, 23, better known as Harvey rapper Chin Chilla Meek. She added, "We don't get the same publicity. Period. Just from being females and doing this. … The guys do rule this one. Whatever. We're changing that."

Chin Chilla Meek's mixtape, "It Feels Good to be Great," was released in late June, kicking off a wave of summer mixtape releases by young Chicago lady MCs. Where Katie Got Bandz's style falls into the blunt, straightforward mold of Chicago drill music, Meek's output is more lyrically dense and reliant on wordplay.

Splitting the difference is Sasha Go Hard (real name: Yaneisha Franklin), a 20-year-old rapper from Hyde Park, whose mixtape "Do You Know Who I Am?" was released in early July. Sasha's lyrics focus on topics like relationships while adopting some of the sonic style of drill music.

"I talk real-life stuff most of the time, and I know people go through the same stuff or can relate to it," she said.

One obstacle Sasha and her peers encounter, however, particularly because of their lyrical openness, is an expectation that they sexualize their output or their image. She dislikes "having to deal with guys wanting something in order for me to get something from them."

"I feel like it shouldn't be like that just because I'm a female, but it doesn't seem like it's going to change," she said. "So I still grind. [There are] people out there that's rocking with me for real—guys—that's just like 'man Sasha, you go hard, I'm going to help you.'"

Katie agreed that the expectations for female rappers (for whom the only real mainstream model is Nicki Minaj) tend to be different from those for male rappers. "A lot of people think female rappers have to sell sex. I'm not selling sex," she said. "You know all the males are going to stick together. The females you've got to be this sort of—you've got to look this way; you've got to rap about this."

Wilson says that Katie's unique outlook—her willingness to rap about the hard-edged, frequently violent subjects that many listeners associate purely with male artists—was part of the appeal of signing her. "She's coming from the perspective of most youth from the inner city. ... She tells the story of that. She tells the story about it being tough. That [bleep]'s real," he said.